Is the generation in education getting less intelligent than the ones before them or smarter?

I often hear people say that the generation after them are not as smart as they were growing up. By people I mean the adults like my parents and grandparents. What is your input on the issues with education? Do you believe the education system is falling apart?

Jun 16 2011:
Okay, I'll be the nob to point out your question about education mistakes "then" for "than." The error might be an intelligence or an education problem or it might have just been haste. I scan many entries on these pages - and on the internet in general and find very intelligent remarks, very smart stuff and original thinking - that are rife with basic spelling and grammatical errors. The smart part of me says shrug it off because online etiquette punishes that kind of nobbery - but the intelligent part of me wants to preserve the rules of language to preserve clear communication. Does this in any way answer your question?

Jun 16 2011:
I thought that too, about "then vs. than" but that error is so common, most people, and esp. those of the younger generation, don't even catch it as the mix-up happens both when it is written and spoken. I know in the scheme of things, errors like this are minor, but I am like you in that the language needs to be perserved, and I cringe at its "bastardization" as I tell my students.

Spelling and grammar HAVE fallen by the wayside and esp. spelling due to the computer. I can remember the program my children were forced to use in the '80's called "Writing to Read" (but its not the same program named that today) and it basically encouraged children to compose "going with their creative flow" and if they didn't know how to spell a word, they were to just write it out phonetically. I think this was done for two reasons: The first one, again, to not break that ceative flow and the second, I think, due to the fact that the "spell checker" was a separate disk. Being both a teacher and a parent, I would CRINGE at the A's they would get for stories that to me, at times, made little sense due to all the misspellings and these misspellings even later on were never addressed; and because of that, I truly think the spelling skills of not only my children but of an entire generation have been hurt.

But besides this, I also think because less of our youth are reading now (except for what is online), more are using netspeak than standard edited English in their communications, and the fact that they were either not taught grammar skills but just skimmed over them, or that they were taught them but not held accountable for learning them has made this problem snowball.

So what is the answer?? I don't think there is one to be honest, as it seems to be mostly a generational divide. This generation may be as intelligent as previous ones, but how they are being perceived is due to how they write online, for that is how we first see them...and first impressions often stick.

Jun 17 2011:
I understand your frustration with spelling and grammatical errors on the internet. But I have to disagree with you that it is a reflection of carelessness. We just realize that those errors are normal and harmless, just so long as the point is clear. Trust me, I have made tons of grammatical mistakes on the internet, but when it comes time to write an essay, conduct research etc. I have time to edit and revise before the final product. There are times when being vigilant about these kinds of things is warranted and times when it is not. Internet language or "net speak" is just a reflection of the culture: fast, efficient and relaxed.
Is it a bad thing? Not sure.

Jun 17 2011:
tehre is an itnerestnig mial cricrultaing on the intrewbes aobut how you can eevn raed txets wehn the lettres are in disarary bteween the begnining and the end of a wrod ;)

Paul Grice postulated four conversational maxims for efficient communication: Quality, Quantity, Relation and Manner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gricean_maxims . Violating these maxims may not necessarily render the message unintelligable, but it is proof that one does not care about efficient communication. And that strongly correlates with a lack of substance. If you have something meaningful to say and want it to be understood, you will care to make it as easily comprehensible as possible.

Jun 18 2011:
Gush, not sure if you were addressing me about carelessness as I couldn't find where i said that. However, like you said, it does depend on whom the "audience" is as to what you will do to clean up your errors.

But besides this, I do think that there is a divide between my generation (who were forced to diagram sentences and "tongue-lashed" if we spoke or wrote incorrectly) and me being an English teacher and those who learn English as a second language vs. the digital natives. But too, English is evolving like it always has, and acceptance occurs more so as the "elders" die off or just "give in" like me in accepting that "partner" is now a verb as well as a noun. But to elaborate a bit more, if I may. My generation is responsible for the indefinite singular pronoun debacle as when I was in high school which was before women's lib, we would say: "Everyone needs to bring his book to class." BUT since HIS is male only, it was changed to him/her which became cumbersome; so now just about everyone uses "their", AND this would not be a major problem for me, but when my students take the SAT, there will be a couple of these indefinite pronouns on the test, and I want them to know the correct answer.So that is that execpt for the fact that we are still judged by how we write online, at least for now? I mean, I have friends who are on dating sites, and if the men/women cannot spell, have bad grammar or use netspeak when they write, it is: DELETE - NEXT. But WHY? To them, that bad writing DOES equate with the person's intelligence and/or carelessness.

And Ray, you are right about that study...weirdly interesting, huh?? BUT I agree totally with your statement: "If you have something meaningful to say and want it to be understood, you will care to make it as easily comprehensible as possible." only adding...AMEN

Thanks for the support :) Regarding your friends, I wouldn't say that bad writing *equates* with low intelligence or carelessness, but it certainly is a strong indicator according to my experience. It doesn't work the other way round though: A correct writing alone leaves you still in uncertainty about the quality of content...

By the way, in the German language not only the people have a gender (sexus), but words too (genus). And Germans are completely overstrained with distinguishing those too, usually believing that the grammatical gender is the same as the biological. Even though we have three grammatical genders in contrast to only two biologicals we acknowledge! And since almost the whole German population fails utterly at the grammar of its very own language, the generic masculinum has been pretty much abolished in favor of either naming both sexes or applying false (!) participles - officially!

Interestingly, there are two exceptions to this. First, the "gender-correct" form is almost never applied when it comes to negative aspects. Until recently, criminals were always referred to by the masculine form only. And second, everyone is fine with generic femininum. For example, a male cat is a "Kater", a female cat is a "Katze", but a bunch of cats are "Katzen", even if they are 99 males and one female. Strangely, Germans have no problem coping with that...

I love the German language though, so by now I always half-ironically say that Germans just don't deserve their language ;) Anyway, I resort to English whenever possible to avoid "genderized German" with its false Grammar. Be glad that gender is practically nonexistant in English. And where it is (pronouns), it falls together with the biological one. You spare yourself a lot of problems!

PS: Would it be wrong to say "Everyone needs to bring one's book to class"?

Jun 19 2011:
Part 1Ray, that site is awesomel! I swear that the net never ceases to amaze me at times as far as what people add to it.

And thanks for the information about the problems with gender in the German language as well...and could it now be common across the board? I know that in Serbian, there isn't really a gender neutral pronoun, and it cracks me up to hear my friends refer to their computers as HIM as in: "I don't know what the problem is as I can't turn him on! "

And about your PS, using one's would be ok, but it is really more British, as we changed using "one" for possession to "his" a LONGGGG time ago, so it would sound awkward to us. Plus, I think the two "ones" would sound awkward as well, but then I am use to American English!

PS I want to share with you an email that has been circulating for a long time and hopefully you haven't seen it yet, as it is both funny and appropriate to what we have been discussing. But it is too long to paste here, so I will copy and paste it in part 2!

Jun 19 2011:
Part 2
Not too sure if the story is true or not, but again, it sure makes me laugh! And I realize that it is off topic of the original poster, so for that I do apologize; but too, it is the E in TED, I think!

A language instructor was explaining to her class that in French, nouns unlike their English counterparts, are grammatically designated as masculine or feminine. "House," in French, is feminine - "la maison.""Pencil," in French, is masculine "le crayon." One puzzled student asked, "What gender is 'computer'?" The teacher did not know, and the word wasn't in her French dictionary. So for fun she split the class into two groups appropriately enough, by gender and asked them to decide whether "computer" should be a masculine or feminine noun each giving four reasons for their recommendation.

The men's group decided that computers should definitely be of the feminine gender ("la computer") because: 1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic; 2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else; 3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for possible later retrieval; and 4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be masculine ("le computer") because: 1. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on; 2. They have a lot of data but they are still clueless; 3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and 4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you'd waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.
-)))

Jun 16 2011:
Well, it depends on what type of intelligence your discussing. The current generation (mine), is being raised in a technology era. I think it is very ignorant for one to say the ability to form theories is lost. We may have Google in our belt of tools; but, that does not take away from the fact WE as people are creating. I am being raised in a society constructed of multi- taskers. Our curiosity for knowledge, has driven us to create the internet.
Yes, maybe we don't look through tedious dictionaries, or write a letter anymore. But, can you honestly say that if we continued to follow the ways of our past generations we would be in the same place we are today?
Look at our advances in the practice of medicine, or technology. It is just purely evolution.

Jun 16 2011:
i agree the reason why calculators were created was to solve even more difficult problems.. i mean if we sit and manually multiply 1746382/24353 it would take us quite some time :) we are the fast generation and we are driven by innovation and our ability to question.

Jun 16 2011:
jacqueline, yes your generation is constructed of multi-taskers, but we are finding out that this is not necessarily a good thing. What if the net was suddenly POOF!!! GONE!!! Then what would you actually know and be able to do coming from just your memory and skill??? Just wondering.

And Sistia, yes I cannot imagine having to multiply those numbers, but it can be done...and the fact that people are losing the skill in doing so is what bothers me. I don't know how many times I have been in a store where the sales clerk has lost the ability to see how much change to give me back, and I am the one who has to tell him/her. That is what scares me. Yes, it takes me a longer time to do my taxes, but I first do them using my "original calculator", my brain, and then I double-check with my calculator. I am with Emerson when he wrote over 170 years ago: "The arts and technology of each era are only window dressing and do not give people life. The harm of improved technology may balance out its good." I can only imagine what he would say today!

But with all this said, I am not knocking technology here, esp. when it comes to what we can do with it medically and scientifically, nor your digital natives, but I just don't want technology to be the "be all and end all" of learning and life. My students still learn with just a book and a pen/pencil and an occasional post-it when they are cajoled by me. Imagine that!

Jun 24 2011:
i've seen that study, the problem with it is that they assume that 100% attention equates to doing something well. the way multi-taskers excel is by doing enough of each task and using the left-over attention for other tasks.

eg if you're watching the tv and doing the dishes at the same time, they'd argue that you're not doing a very good job of watching the tv, however it's not necessary to catch every single word and pixel on the screen to follow whatever it is you're watching.

notice in the study how they judge a subject's effectiveness by evaluating how well they focus on a single task? -
"hey you're only focussed 80% on this task! you're not doing it well!"
"yes i am, it only needs 80%..."

Jun 26 2011:
Multitasking was originally used to describe a computer ability to process different information at the same time. This ability was sold to the public as something that would improve their lives,which it has since it make computers faster. The problem is we do not so much as multitask as we task switch at increasing fast rates, even when you are doing dishes by the TV. Would you wash dishes during your favorite movie. I wouldn't. It why even having a cell phone conversation when driving increases the chances of accidents. When having a conversation with a passenger in a car the driver and passenger will intuit-ally stop talking when road conditions become more complex and resume conversation when the road straightens and traffic mellow. A person on the other end of a cell phone does not have such data and will vie for the drivers attention during any traffic condition causing a potential hazard. If we could multitask this would not be a problem.

Jun 27 2011:
i agree and that's my point - just because you are not highly focused on a low-priority job doesn't mean you are doing it poorly.

i'm sure you wouldn't argue that one cannot keep their place in a queue for movie tickets while talking on the phone? however it would be more difficult to read the back of the shirt of the person standing in front of you while talking on said phone, since it requires more attention, and this attention must be subtracted from the phone call.

Jun 15 2011:
That is a complex question. First, we have to define intelligence. I am certainly worse at mental arithmetic than I was in school, but I have gained insight into statistical thinking. So have I become more intelligent or less? As we see, it depends on what we consider to be valuable abilities. Personally, I consider mental arithmetic to be unimportant. Sure, it saves time, but we don't suffer a shortage of calculators. Even Google has one built in! On the other side, the ability to interpret statistics has not be mastered by programs, so it is much more important that humans are capable of it.

Second, we have to keep in mind that the general knowledge increases. We had molecular genetics and the theory of relativity in school, and it wouldn't surprise me to see the largest scientific revolutions of our generation to become a standard element of the curriculum for our children. So the base line of general education is always shifting. This isn't necessarily a positive development: Two weeks ago I heard a biologist complain that kids these days can name more car brands than animal species. Even the most basic knowledge about nature is lost; there are fifth-graders in Germany who aren't aware that meat comes from dead animals! Is this expendable information or do these 11-year-olds display shocking ignorance?

But say we found a set of abilities of which we say that they were relevant in the past as well as in the present. Then we have to find data that has continously tested people with the same measures so that a comparison over time is possible. Does something like that exist? Thilo Sarrazin, who wrote an extremely successful book on social and educational problems in Germany, cites data from the BASF corporation's recruitment tests regarding arithmetics and spellings, and he states that the performances have indeed dramatically declined over the last 35 years.

But this only refers to Germany, and the situation in the United States may be vastly different...

Jun 15 2011:
Interesting.... but your schools are obviously still doing something right as most of my German exchange students do very well here and show up our kids in both skill (and this is with English not being their mother tongue) and self-discipline. However with that said, you are right about the basic skills not being known...and I think that is due to many in education thinking that certain things are/were not really needed as they are/were boring to learn; but they forget that those "boring things" are usually the foundations on which the FUN STUFF is built upon.

And as far as the BASF observation, that is world wide from what I can tell, as I think that spelling has just fallen by the wayside due to computers and computer programs as well as solving arithemtic problems due to calculators. I know using them makes the process a lot faster, but students need to know certain things and to rely on themselves....for this technology is/may not always be with us.

we surely have a case of self-selection bias here. The students from my class who went abroad in general and to the USA in particular were predominantly the best students in our class. And not only in regard to intelligence: We have widespread anti-americanism to offer, only will such persons hardly decide to spend a year in the country they despise. So while I certainly wish that you have made pleasant and inspiring encounters with Germans, you need to keep in mind that you met a massively distorted sample of our population.

I have to admit that I shared those sentiments for the longest time, but after school that began to change with increasing interest in politics. By now the situation has turned upside down, and I regularly find myself defending the USA against German prejudices. Sometimes I feel like an American exchange student in Germany ;) A few days ago I stumbled upon an article from 2007 about the "Rent an American" project, and it astounded me how perfectly it described my experiences: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,496731,00.html . Even though I have never set a foot on the American continent!

To be honest, I don't know about the global trend. It would be interesting to find out whether that is the case or whether some industrialized countries show the opposite development. I can only speculate here, but my spontaneous guess would be this:

Imagine a world where all people achieve academic titles - not because they are that smart, but because the standards have been lowered. The titles would suffer a massive loss of value, and we would assume that people have become drastically dumber - because the PhDs from the past were much cleverer than the PHDs in the present! However, is it really justified to compare those two groups with each other? One group underwent a harsh preselection, the other one didn't. The preselection in the past may not have been perfect; let's say not all clever people got to make an academic career, but only those who were bright and rich. Still, isn't it absolutely plausible that this tiny group showed better performances than the whole of the population? Wouldn't a fair comparison necessarily involve the whole of the current population and the whole of the past population? And maybe we would see then that the average intelligence has actually increased?

So let's say that in 1950 about 5% of the population got Abitur, and nowadays 20% do. Maybe we shouldn't pit the 5% of the past against the 20% of the present, but only against the top 5% of the *current* population?

Of course this doesn't explain why the abilities of primary school children suddenly decline - if they do decline. But while there may be a negative trend, it could less dramatic than it seems at first glance...

Jun 16 2011:
Thank you for responding Ray. First, I do not know about your school and sending students here, but from what I can tell by talking to all the students I have had throughout the years, yes they tend to be good ones (sans one I had from Switzerland), but more so if their parents have the money to send them here.

Second, your anti-American statement blew me away, for I have many German friends besides my students, and I have never heard of this, so I am not sure what you mean by me having a "massively distorted sample of your population." But I am glad to read that you are ok with my country!

Third, I taught in Europe in 2007 and am in contact with teachers from many countries, and from my personal experience and from what they have told me that abilities are declining just like they are here. I am not sure how Germany is handling it though and trying to revamp its system to accommodate the "digital natives."

And lastly, about your "imagine" statement, I agree with you in a way, but what you say is still almost like comparing apples to oranges and because of this, coming up with a viable drawn conclusion is hard!!! If we are as intelligent or more so than the past, I think the areas of where this intelligence lies may not be exactly the same.

Jun 24 2011:
good point ray. also even if the number of PhD's remined the same, it's likely the criteria for reaching that grade would have changed, and so it would be impossible to judge without an IQ test.
i think i heard on a ted talk once that intelligence was increasing by about 3 IQ points per decade.

German exchange students mostly visit Gymnasien here, though we also have Hauptschulen and Realschulen in our education system. So that alone already increases the chance that they will come from the better-off schools and families. But I would also guess that they are above average in their class, too.

Friends are not representative samples ;) I consider all of my friends to be intelligent, decent people, which is hardly a surprise since I select them for these attributes, deliberately and unknowingly. But semi-random encounters I come to chat with, even if they are very pleasant ones, predictably show an attitude towards the USA that I describe as "There be dragons!", a mixture of superstition, suspicion and slight fear (nicer encounters) or condesendence (unnicer encounters). In the article there is this paragraph:

"Edward Janssen describes a typical conversation with a German student. First question: What's your name? Second: Where are you from? Third: Did you vote for Bush? By that time, says Janssen, the German student will already have launched into a discussion of the Iraq war, the death penalty, gun control or climate protection."

This is *exactly* my experience. Sure, the beginning is slightly different, but you can bet that when I say something positive about the USA, the other person will reply with one of these five topics instantly. Interestingly, this happens more reliably with university students which matches the statement that "Anti-Americanism is the only prejudice in Germany that increases with social status and higher education". And this attitude is deeply unjustified for many reasons, of which historical gratitude to the USA is the least important.

I am more than okay with the USA. Don't be surprised if I wash ashore on the coast of New England some day :D

Jun 16 2011:
I can hardly tell you anything about the current situation in German schools. The good thing is that the education system in Germany is one of the very few things that is primarily in the hands of the federal states. On the other side, we are constantly reforming it, or at least announcing and pretending to. So there is a lot of talk about change with rarely anything happening, let alone anything positive. So if I visited my former school today, I wouldn't expect much to have changed. Maybe I should do it, then I could ask former teachers about what has happened in the past decade :)

Yes, such comparisons are notoriously difficult. I would stick with basic abilities in the fields maths and language instead of modern biology or political science. I just wanted to highlight a methodical error that researchers may not take into account...

Jun 14 2011:
YIKES!!! That is a hard question to answer. From a teacher's perspective, I know personallly that I have had to approach teaching literature differently and water down some topics since I first began in 1974, buI am not so sure it is due to "lack of smarts". I know that vocabulary of teens has fallen from 25,000 words in 1950 to 15,000 in 2000 as students are not reading as much. But I am not so sure they are not as smart; it is just they are smart in many things but these things are different from decades back; plus, one has to factor in that they really need to know more than in the past. But if they are still smart, what then is the problem? I do wonder as I see a total difference in approach to education when I get an exchange student. I remember once I had a female from Germany, and she earned an A on a project and in fact was the only one in the class to get one. I asked if I could share that with the class along with she would be retaking her junior when she returned as American schools in most countries are looked upon as not being equitable. She allowed me to do so, and afterward, one student asked her point blank why then was she even trying? She turned to him and in all seriousness, responded: TO LEARN. Imagine that... a student who actually WANTED to learn!! See, we in America for the most part, do not value that aspect...to actually learn something of value. That has fallen by the wayside...and maybe that is what your parents are referring to?But besides this, what I find is that many (not all) do not see "big pictures", cannot think critically, make connections, nor retain information but due to what, I am not sure and neither do my colleagues. My students also tend to be more egocentric for the most part and don't have the "wonder" that I had nor the joy of learning for learning's sake as they see no value in it, and maybe this is what needs to be looked at again...but then how can learning to read critically and write well be a bad thing.

Jun 15 2011:
Linda
You summed it up when you mention your students were wondering why someone would try if they were not being graded. Would you say children are less intrinsically curious or do they separate schooling from learning and associate it mere with grading. If I had to guess I would say due the growing economic divide, todays youth sees schooling as more of a way of meeting certain academic criteria as to allow them to meet financial success. Formal learning has become intwined with marketplace values, leaving generation Y to explore the idea of learning for the sake of knowledge in other areas. What's your take?

Jun 15 2011:
Good question and keeping in mind that all children are different. overall this is what I have seen (and for a long time). Most students care more for the grade than what they have learned. In fact, we are told as teachers not to even put on time-consuming comments as the students don't read them, they just want to know what they got. But me being the rebel and eternal optimist, I always write comments on their papers; and most do go back to read them once they find out their grade as I do comment on their thoughts and not just on errors.

But getting back to you, for many students the grade is the "be all and end all' as it will help them get into a good college and like you wrote "meet financial success." In fact, we in our county may get rid of Valedictorian and Salutatorian as the past two year two students (and brothers for goodness sakes) who were vying for those spots were caught cheating (phone cam taking pics of the test; and stealing a test from a teacher's desk). And since we had no ethical rules in place for these two honors, they both graduated as being our high school's Valedictorians. Pretty sad, huh? BUT I do come across those gems who are like sponges and who want to learn and find out the WHY'S of things....and that is what makes my job worthwhile. However, you have to look at our society as a whole, for we tend to not value learning....just getting the diploma. If we did, we would not put so much time and money into our sports programs and call athletes "heroes". We do not honor the thinkers and the doers (like many at TED) who are actually changing the world and making it a better place (but that is another topic, is it not?!).So I hope I answered your question. OH but I forgot to tell you, that YOU, gave me an idea! Next year on one set of returned papers, I am going to have my students re-read them along with all of my comments, and tell ME the grade they think they earned and why. We will then compare evaluations to see how well they did. :-)

Comment deleted

Jun 19 2011:
You are right...flying fingers and small print and me not wearing my reading glasses are a disaster waiting. to happen! However, if this were for a grade or something going home to parents, trust assured, I would have done what I tell my students to do.... read their paper backwards, for then they are not reading for content and can see their spelling/typos better.

Jul 12 2011:
i think there are two questions here. intelligence is one things. education is another thing. i would say intelligence is a physical gene issue for us as a whole. is education increasing our intelligence? i dont think education has anything to do with intelligence.
the idea that education=smarter is not true.
if you have watched some of the talks here then I think its been established that most of the education systems ARE falling apart.
I may know way more than my grandmother about specific things, but she knew way more about a lot more to make her a more conscientous member of society.
if truly we were getting more intelligent then would we be smoking, choosing to NOT be farmers?

Jul 1 2011:
It's also a matter of quantity versus quality. Over the years, there will obviously be more information to be taught and less time to teach it. Also, what we thought was true some time in the past might not be true and we may come into new evidence that suggests otherwise, which increases the quality of education.

I think it is crucial to ask the question "what do we want to accomplish with our educational system?" If all we want is getting people ready to work for corporations, then the system doesn't need to make them "intelligent", just able to work at corporations. If we want to empower people and make them more intelligent, then we will likely have a different educational system that can accomplish those goals.

Also remember... a dumb population is easier to control then an intelligent one....

Jun 28 2011:
Hi Scott,
The tools in some communities have been broken for years, even decades (there is also a small population who has NEVER had access). Digital technology is making information fluid. Those of us who had little to no use of all those tools of antiquity are finally able to access information at a higher rate with the help of low cost technology.

Jul 6 2011:
I think it important to realize that knowledge and intelligence are two different things. You can put all knowledge into a computer but it will not have the intelligence to use the information. I believe the problem with education today is that we are feeding children knowledge and not feeding intelligence. For example; I know that with a gun, I can get what makes me happy. Intelligence tells me that I can be happy anytime I choose. Knowledge has increased but intelligence has remained almost unchanged.
I am very new to this type of media and I replied to a comment bellow but then decided to comment on the question itself, so that is why this appears twice. I copy/pasted my own comment.

Jul 5 2011:
Human knowledge is said to increase by 2/3 of the total accumulated knowledge every year. With these numbers please bear in mind that with new knowledge comes new applications for the knowledge. Every generation has its own advancements as well as its own challenges. To judge wether one generation is smarter than another is not very practical considering the different events and happenings as well as technological advancements in each generation.

On a sepparate note, different people learn in different ways. Some people are linguistic others are logic oriented. With today's world, people are more accepting of those who do not persue higher education. The problem is not that the education system is flawed, it's that the paradigm is different. People nowadays can choose not to persue a post secondary education and still make a decent living. So in conclusion the generation is neither geting smarter nor less intelligent than the generation prior to this one.

Jul 12 2011:
I think that the education system IS flawed AND the paradigm is different. Different only because we change the environment and situations but use time old practices (and by that I mean outdated) in the classroom. We have too much information out there, most of which are more opinion than factual and most of which haven't been critically thought through yet will be taken at face value by students who use it. And not just critical thinking but actually seeing the bigger picture -we have too much information that connect to each other but aren't being connecte --just small blurbs and respewing repetitious information.

The mark of intelligence is someone who questions, and challenges what is presented. How many students are allowed to do that in a flawed educational system? There are special classes and honors classes for that but that's just ostracizing the students and putting them down before they even get a chance to discover the love of learning. I'll stop now, because I'm just ranting at this point.

Jul 3 2011:
As an example to your question I'd like to tell story and after ridding it you will conclude and get your answer. " I have a neighbor she is a smart woman, all her life (approximately 60 years ) she spend at school by teaching kids math , and so you understand that she is a teacher. One evening she came to me and ask to add some of her pictures to social network site (odnoklassniki.ru it's russian site) and I did it and she look carefully at the process (i think it's not difficult for her as a smart women )but every time she need to upload a new picture she bring it to me. but there is one little boy who doesn't go to school yet I show him one time that and second time he didn't ask me. and so who is smarter ?????????

Jul 5 2011:
Exactly, we are in a period of transition. The Cyborg Anthropologist, Amber Case, asks what is the difference between storing the library of information we carry around in our handheld electronic devices and putting them on a microchip installed in the brain? The point being that it used to be common place for human beings to memorize vast amounts of information. But now, we don't need to memorize much of anything, we just need to become acclimated enough to the technologies so that we may access such information whenever necessary.

When our genus discovered how to cook meat to tenderize it, their strong jaw muscles began to shrink as they were no longer necessary to chew. This freed up a lot of calories in the diet, which were reallocated to increase brain capacity, ultimately evolving into us as the dominant species. I'm very curious to see how this new stage of evolution will result. For now, we do not need our considerable brain power to store trivia, what are we going to use it for now?

Because of this transition, emphasis needs to be placed on developing critical thinking abilities. It's not about what one knows any longer, but rather what one can comprehend. In this respect, there is a growing number of the global youth population who possess incredible and innovative critical thinking abilities. These people are the leaders of tomorrow, as they tend to be more determined to achieve, relying on collaborative techniques. On the other hand, and as per usual, there are likely more members of this population who know how to navigate the new technology, but focus lies not in collaborative achievement, but self-serving interests, i.e. entertainment. These are the people that watch Jersey Shore, and tweet about it, but never even heard about the Gulf Oil Spill. But we always see this, there are leaders and followers. It's up to the leaders to break the hold advertisers have over the followers, and teach them the importance of civic engagement.

Jul 1 2011:
Seeing the IQ plus the Flynn effect I can't see any substantial difference, but it seems obvious this generation is better on multitasking and worst on focusing on one thing. I think the first fact is positive and the second fact is clearly negative. I see an evolution but not necessarily an intellectual improvement. Focusing and deep thinking is very important to achieve all kind of knowledge and in all life aspects.

Yes: When it comes to being self-sufficient without use of technology, our generation is dumber than the previous generation. Strip away the iphone, ipad, or the laptop from your typical 17-year old, and s/he would first go crazy and violent, and then slump down into a corner as if brain-dead. Our generation has outsourced a majority of the tasks from the brain to the digital technology. Our brains are only used at the "managerial level", at choosing, deciding or interpreting the outcomes from these digital devices. Our parents and grandparents would set about to work with all of their brain and body power, being very self-sufficient. They utilized their brains for a wider range of purposes than our generation - calculator, address/phone book, scheduling assistant, general-purpose machine, etc.

No: By being freed of using our brains for routine processing, MAYBE our brains are more conducive to come up with smarter ideas, bigger innovations, different ways of solving problems, efficient delegation of tasks to our digital "companions".

They are two different types of intelligences. The previous generation was smart in "production" while this generation is smart in "delegation/management".

Jun 26 2011:
i would think the opposite. The current generation is bombarded with so much information that they ask strange and unimaginable questions to the earlier generation and many times than not, the earlier generation has no answer. In that aspect the earlier generation is less intelligent. Added to it, the exposure to the different languages, cultures, ideas at an early age makes accumulation of knowledge much faster now. The children of today are much cleverer. The younger kids are much more street smart. The only area i can say the past generation was better was in social intelligence - with virtual / social networks, the current generation has sort of lost out on the REAL social intelligence.

Jun 22 2011:
unfortunately i have to say less. "brilliant minds" setting education policy such as incentives to schools for test performance and removing all scores, prizes, ticks and crosses are to blame. they've given us a generation of kids who've remembered a bunch of facts but have had to time after that to learn how to apply them, and who, never having had to face the shame of getting a D think they're wonderful and therefore have no motivation.

furthermore it's destroyed all the good teachers. if you've given the world a class full of well-adjusted kids able to work out the answers to problems on their own, able to handle the upset of getting second place, and motivated to work hard for their A and enjoy the feeling of success at reaching it, you'll be deemed an inept teacher by a panel of government bureaucrats, psychologists and school board members (none of which has taught a class in their life), who will then cut off your funding in favour of someone who can turn out a 'good' class of kids able to parrot the textbook.

Jun 18 2011:
If u talk about intelligence, i am the opinion that we have not had enough time to change the overall human intelligence from just a few generations back. What we are getting are schools that are doing less teaching and more Administration/ politics.
Schools should exist to give a rounded education to children nothing less and nothing more. Since when did constructing a stadium, getting new buildings, installing ipads in the library, paying millions for coaches, making back deals on textbooks putting up a security detail for teachers, making sure all kids are on the same level, teaching for exams, rote memorization, government oversight, child welfare e.t.c become a hallmark of teaching. Our schools (not the teachers), are reducing the collective I.Q.

Comment deleted

Jun 16 2011:
There is no doubt the intelligence of generations increase over time, our generation enjoys the comfort of exposure and the abundant availability of knowledge. But this has come for a price, due to the continuous and rapid influx of technology there has been suddenly a room created for absolute senselessness; example the various reality T.V shows, the entertainment gossips and other numerous social networking activities. This has dampened the creative skills of the current generation. But there is no doubt the direction of growth is clear and healthy. The few who lead the society are definitely of higher intellectual capacity.
So i would say the education is defiantly getting more intelligent and people have become much smarter. There is room for improvement which is good because as long as there is room for improvement there is innovation.

Jun 15 2011:
I was once read a quote that went on about the feckless nature of today's youth, how they were only interested in drink and sex and that the level of violence amongst them was terrifying. The writer was Chaucer. So nothing changes especially the previous generation complaining about the present one.

I would assume that smarts have not changed massively only the context. How many of todays generation would think of banging the rocks together. And how many cavemen would know what to do with google.

context is everything.

next time your parents are asking you to sort out the technology they have just bought might be a good time to reflect on the low quality of todays youth :-)

There are many bad movies around, and a fairly reliable way to spot one is to see if it claims in the title already to expose a myth, blow a conspiracy or reveal a code. So as far as it concerns me, I won't watch it. But if you are really convinced that it has substance, why not present its core arguments? If they are convincing, I might overthink my attitude. Christophe Cop might have wanted to hint at that with his laconic answer...

Jun 15 2011:
I believe that the world changes and people are forced to change with it.

Today, do children really need to learn about questions that can be easily Googled? How many children need to know how many gallons go into a bushel? Should we really link intelligence with the ability to memorize any and all facts? I do not think so and I think, on average, the generations of today are as smart as the generations of yesterday.

Now it is more important that people know how to analyze a situation, gather the correct data and extrapolate a well derived idea, innovation or conclusion from their analysis and data gathering.

I do think Education has failed to evolve with the times. (Though there is some change)

Jun 15 2011:
I have to disagree with you. In the past one could say were guilty of over emphasizing memorization. The purpose of this is not, or should not be to just program kids with fact, but to teach them how to make their brains retain facts. Having the ability to memorizes is going to provide anyone with an advantage in life. Of course analyses is important, but the more raw data one has the more informed the analysis will be. Also having the ability to google something does not make you any smarter, than having a boat make you a better swimmer. Its a tool, but if children lack the ability to extrapolate info from the world without the google crutch then we will just have to accept them as our overlord.
I don't mean to imply that we are dumbing down, but we should be wary of trends. On a positive note, this generation seems much more promising when it comes to making social connections. This should not be underestimated.

Jun 15 2011:
I agree with everyone who responded to the original poster. People keep coming up with the strange notion that thanks to the Internet,a person no longer needs to know things. But that is ridiculous! It is true that we did use to base most everything on strict memorization and that is what we were tested on, but times have changed and thank goodness it has! However, this does not mean that there is nothing that should be memorized even though it is the lowest form of intelligence. Memorization is still needed as part of our thought process, for what we retain not only forms foundations upon which common ideas can be discussed and shared and built upon, but also serves as a frame of reference that ties a people together and makes sense of history. Don't you think people should know when WWII occurred without having to look it up?? I am not saying that we need to know every single date that is studied in history, but the BIG ONES that changed one's country or the world is something that should be retained. In short, educated people just know certain things...and with the things they do not know, then Google can enter the picture....without it being a "crutch" as anthony aptly called it.

But besides this, memorization also makes us concentrate and focus more and that is something that is definitely needed today as we are finding out that all of this multitasking not really conducive to learning and truly understanding and remembering something. Let me leave you with this... how many times did you look up something but then get sidetracked as you found something else of interest or wondered what happend to 'anyone' on Facebook?? What happened to your focus??? It fell by the wayside. And what IF all of a sudden there was no net available, and you needed to know not necesarily how many gallons to a bushel, but how many pints in a quart as you were busy concocting up something delicious to drink?. If you had that in your memory, your smoothie would be done and YUM! ;-)

Jun 20 2011:
I understand that some of you are worried about my generation's dependability on the NET for easily searchable facts or information, but what the older generation has to realize is the fact that "INTERNET IS HERE TO STAY". It gives birth to a great conspiracy theory to imagine what would happen to my generation's ingenuity if the internet were disabled, and nothing more. It would be an immense problem for everyone young and old if electricity suddenly disappeared from our reality; and that is just as likely of a scenario. As a matter of fact, I read just a couple of days ago that UN now considers internet availability and usage as part of basic human rights that everyone deserves to have; and they will now prosecute any political leaders who disrupts internet service in their country for political reasons, as having committed crimes against humanity.
Having said that, I do agree that it highly annoys me when some of my friends cannot use a map to navigate strange roads because of their over-dependence on GPS. We certainly over depend on technology at the expense of losing the ability to use the fullest potential of our minds.
I have recently started a company to address this very issue, along with numerous other concerns that affect education in the digital age. A lot of my friends are working to improve the education process in their own ways as well, because we realize the colossal discrepancy between the values and skills that education is supposed to instill in us, versus our actual experience going through the american system of secondary and higher education. Please have faith in my generation,because we realize that although the NET has helped make our daily existence a lot easier with the illusion of fun, we also recognize the crippling effect it is having on our development. Just like all of the generations before us, we will figure out the proper boundaries of new technology in our daily lives. Please believe in our will to improve.

Jun 20 2011:
I have the feeling that it is worthy to have some trust in the new digitalgeneration, but at the moment it is an analogue generation that is putting up the rules. And I certainly do think that memorizing facts is still somewhat important. It is simply a matter of effecivity in thinking if I have to look up a fact twice until I really can relate it to the context, or if I can have a conversation without using the words "The name of this concept... it is somewhere, let me look it up briefly!" But how would he look it up effectively, if he even did not care about the name enough to memorize it, not to talk about its defining attributes? (That has happened to me too often, I had to teach myself memorization again)
Ah and one more thing: Memorizing is always good once it is related to ideas, alternatives and consequences, which is a good practice for problem solving, I believe.

Jun 21 2011:
Nevil, I am worried that common information/skills need to be looked up to be honest, for like we and even you have stated, they are needed for problem solving...and problems do still come up when there are no computers around; but I am not worried about YOUR generation and moving us forward. I do have faith in you as well as many of my former students.

Now as far as the net, I know it is here to stay, but I am afraid that at some point in time, even temporarily, that big plug in the sky will be disconnected. Or maybe because I still have a hard time logically understanding that air waves can carry sound and pictures and that airplanes can fly!!! ACK!

AND finally what is this?? You had written: "A lot of my friends are working to improve the education process in their own ways as well, because we realize the colossal discrepancy between the values and skills that education is supposed to instill in us, versus our actual experience going through the american system of secondary and higher education." Being a teacher, I would love to know not only the discrepancies that you have discovered, but what you are doing to improve education.:-)Regards....

Jul 13 2011:
Well, reading you're comment, I immediately identified with " people say that the generation after them are not as smart as they were growing up..." I have said it myself many times before... and a week ago, my brother, who is 20 years old, said the exact same thing, which made me both shocked and a bit amused as I think that his generation is the worst... Non of this is to say anything about intelligence though, its not that education is not doing its job, nor that people are getting less smart - I believe it should be attributed to our culture as a whole, the provocative music,the pursue of fame and fortune, the materialistic state of mind and many more distractions and "pseudo ideals" that we install our youth with... My parents listened in the house to music from the 50's and 60's, they took me out for camping and made me understand the importance of simple living (as long as you are with loved ones...), now, 10 year old children, listen to pop music which contain lyrics such as "let me sex you up". I am studying to become an English teacher, I can ensure you that my students would be exposed by me to different values than "let me sex you up"... alongside that, nowadays, we have teachers who are so jaded that they don't even realize what's out there... is it their fault? is it society fault? parents? youth? I'm not sure who's fault is it, or even if there's really someone to blame, and I don't claim that the 21'st century is "bad" for us, but maybe we left some important values behind without noticing...

Jul 13 2011:
The problem is not that education is failing, it is that SO MANY people have access to it now. This isn't a bad thing, but the result is more and more people that are just in the system because they can be, not for the intentions of a knowledgeable mind, but for the ranks of society and because that is what you DO.

Jul 13 2011:
The education today is undoubtedly awakening the smarter side of the brain, by implementingmore non conventional learning and teaching ways!
It is exciting to understand that a child today is nurtured not only to excel in academics but honed to progress in other development skills which, I believe plays very trivial but extremely cruicial role in days to come.